I like the idea of video games better than actually playing

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Lately, I've had a lot of time to kill, and I've been too broke and lazy to do anything else, so I've been playing a lot of video games. Well, it just so happens that while they can sometimes be enjoyable for me, more often than not they are just plain frustrating. Team Fortress 2 in particular has caused me to yell at my computer and throw my wireless mouse more times than I can care to count, and I'm slowly starting to remember why I quit playing that stupid game in the first place. OK, it's actually a good game, it's just that I suck at it, and it seems other people either have better gear than I do, or they are just plain better at the game. But it's not just TF2; Smash on my 3DS is frustrating due to the connection problems I've been having; Hearthstone, while fun at first, quickly became frustrating after I discovered just how pay-to-win it is; Postal 2 is starting to wear thin in its entertainment/stress relief value, much like pretty much every other open world game I've played...

I'm also starting to get sick of visiting the same websites all the time and seeing the same topics be discussed over and over, I'm sick of listening to the same music over and over, I'm sick of talking to the same people online... I'm just plain sick of everything I used to like, and everything around me. If a rift in space and time opened up and dropped me into another world, I would probably be grateful... or at least I would be once I somehow managed to get back home and be reunited with things.

Wow, that went in a weird direction.

Nah, you'd get sick of it too, eventually.

As gaming goes, it sounds like you just need to find new ones to play.

I mean, some of the issues are pretty much unavoidable: TF2, the fact that it even HAS equipment means that it's utterly inevitable that you get situations where yours just isnt good enough. Hearthstone is a trading card game. I know Blizzard likes to go on about how "free" it is, but one way or another... they still need to make money, just like anyone else. And traditionally, trading card games are an EXPENSIVE hobby. Yes, you CAN play HS totally for free and get somewhere. But you have to play about a billion squillion times in order to get enough cards and such. But really, "Free2Play" is *usually* just a myth. It's why I hate the idea so much.... it's like, just charge for the damn games already like everyone always used to do, instead of trying to HIDE the charge. And for Smash... check your connection on your end. I always tell people, it *isnt* the servers on that one most of the time. If it was, it'd be a constant, unending problem for everyone that plays it, but many people never see these issues. I play it online and most of the time it just never happens to me. THough, it also depends on what mode you're doing. If you're doing 4-way matches.... THAT is the exception, as it's got a high chance of being a mess. I just ignore that mode. 1 on 1 though? Usually, it doesnt give any problems; the game handles it well.

And the less I say about Postal, the better.

If I'd been stuck with THOSE games for too long (like a couple of days) I'd have gone crazy by now, frankly.


Beyond that though... it sounds like you just need something new somewhere. I've been where you are, that feeling of "argh I'm so tired of EVERYTHING" where everything is boring/uninteresting/stupid and it doesnt feel like there's much you can do.

I'd been getting that lately. Not about gaming, just about.... everything else. I ended up deciding to try a couple of new hobbies (particularly after the insistence of my "life coach", and she was right), one of which is learning to draw, and the other of which is cubing (which I'm REALLY getting into though it can make my arm hurt). Doing that gave me some more options on things to do.... not JUST stuff that involves sitting at this computer. I can do these things anywhere.

And that's really helped a ton. Making a lot of difference. So that's one idea, is to just try something totally new, see what happens.

Same thing happened to me. I lost my passion for gaming and got no pleasure from playing, but I still wanted to experience certain games, so now I just watch playthroughs of them on YouTube.

Killing time is killing yourself, only slowly.

I've been wanting to find new hobbies, but it seems that there's nothing out there that really interests me, and I simply don't have the physical coordination or time or money to do a lot of things. I spend a lot of time just bored and frustrated out of my mind, and lately it seems that I've been getting pissed off at things a lot more easily than before.



Watching "let's plays" with commentary annoys the crap out of me because I want to be able to hear the ingame audio, and watching them without also annoys me somewhat because I see how well other people play, and I envy them for being a million times better than me.


I'm useless anyway, so what difference does it make? I'd rather not be dead though, because at least I know that there are some things I enjoy, and I would rather focus my time on enjoying those things.

See, that's part of the problem right there though: If you have so many negative thoughts about yourself, then you're right: You wont be able to do these things that you want to do, or do them well.

I mean, just because you see someone do something amazing in a game doesnt at all mean you cant do it. These things are all about practice though. Nobody is a master right away. Me, I do shmups, usually of the bullet-hell sort. I've been into them for awhile now. I've shown them here on the forums before... you might have seen some of that. I am good, very good. But I sure as bloody hell didnt START that way. When I originally found the genre, Mushihime-sama was the one I found videos of, and the one that caught my interest. I recognized it though as being beyond my skill level, so I started with a MUCH easier game, which was Giga Wing. That one can almost be called a beginner's shmup... an entry point into the genre. It is easy. But at that time, and for awhile, I just couldnt do it. I just couldnt reach the end, let alone beat the game. And I'd look at these videos of these other, harder games, and see these players do these absurd things, and it seemed like I'd never get there.

Fast-forward to now though, and I did indeed get there. But it took PRACTICE. A ton of it. And I used videos of these high level players as reference as well, to learn some tricks that could help me advance. I dont really need those anymore, but... that's only because of where they got me, along with all of that practice. The key was, I didnt give up on it. Despite that the shmup genre, well.... you're pretty much expected to lose and get game overs hundreds, even thousands of times in ONE game before you manage to beat it, or come close to beating it.

Of course, if you go into it with this view of "there's no WAY I can possibly do it, why even try?", then you're right... you wont be able to do it. You'll have defeated yourself before you even started. This even goes for things like physical coordination. That takes practice as well; it doesnt just HAPPEN. People have this bizarro idea that it DOES just happen, but that's simply incorrect. If you constantly think you cant improve that aspect, then indeed, you will not improve it. But if you bloody well just try ANYWAY, you might surprise yourself. And remember, this isnt coming from someone who is an NT. I"m every bit as autistic as anyone else in this place, probably more than many. But I still know all these things to be true and have been through every one of them.

And if you're looking for a new game to play though... who knows, maybe I can help with that bit, if you like. I can help with learning and getting better at them in some cases too; depends on what sorts they are (nobody should ask for help from me with an FPS, for instance, unless you not only want to lose, but want to lose SPECTACULARLY).

I never watch the ones with commentary. That's why I search for a "playthrough" or a "longplay" instead of a "walkthrough" or especially a "let's play." I just want footage of someone playing through the game. If I start watching the video and hear someone talking, I close the window. Let's Plays are the worst; they're usually people who have never played the game before and are wannabe comedians who are far more annoying than funny. And seeing someone doing better at the game than me is less annoying than actually having to play it, getting frustrated and/or bored and never finishing it.

This is why I never watch the "major" LPers.

I like LP vids alot, but yeah... I ignore all the big guys (with a couple of exceptions). If someone's going to be funny, I want to just see them being naturally funny, not doing it in a forced way like they have to get in some specific amount of jokes per minute. The worst part for me is that they're often making jokes, comments, or outright rants about things that have NOTHING to do with the game. AND, worst of all, that type of LPer has the annoying tendancy to want to bring others into it; I like LPs, but I DONT like LPs that have more than one person at a time. It ends up just being A: very slow moving, and B: alot of them talking about nonsense.

If someone's commentary is actually sticking to the subject (the game they are playing), and if the humor is just them being themselves... then it's all good.

I guess this might be because that's how I am. My style of humor is just me being sarcastic or.... sarcastic. Like, if some character in a game gives me a quest to go kill a water elemental, I might say something like "Well, okay, we've just received orders to go stab water. Makes perfect sense". And that's not a forced joke, it's how I sound IRL as well. I talk like that all the time and just automatically sound that way (my father finds this highly amusing). To a degree, I may or may not come off that way even just on forums like this one. But the point is that it's not me trying to "act".

And if the LPer is doing things in the way I do them, AKA, not trying to act and just being themselves.... that's all I really need. It's just soooooooo much better than LPs with alot of forced humor.

....also the LP'ers I watch are ALWAYS people that have played the game before. I just... why would you even DO it if you arent already familiar with the game? It actually took quite awhile for me to run into that sort of thing for the first time: where the LPer HADNT played the game before. Usually, I expect LPers to not just have played it, but to have beaten it extensively. The ones I'm familiar with will occaisionally mention their "previous playthrough, in preparation for this LP" or something, and that's how I'd do it too.

But anyway, yeah, that's my thoughts on that. I watch alot of these.... they're actually the main sorts of things I watch, as there's very little else I care to watch these days.... so I can ramble about them quite a bit.

The quality has declined since the golden era of videogames, which IMO was the NES and SNES era along with the Genesis which, despite never reaching the same popularity as Nintendos consoles, gave us some games that were groundbreaking at the time.

Games have become a lot more forgiving, in a negative sense. "Losing" means just going back 2 minutes to the previous checkpoint because your regenerating health could not regenerate faster than you took hits for instance.

FPS in the past required you to be more careful. No health regen. Sometimes you had portable medpacks, and these had to be rationed, otherwise you had to make it from one to the next, and in milsims there were no such thing if it was one of the realistic ones. Now there is no consequence to taking hits anymore, and it leads to less investment and immersion.

The Game Over screen is some archaic legend that kids have heard about but never actually experienced.
That's because everyone is a winner now and you can't punish anybody.

I bet you incetive to play comes back if videogames become good again so that there are consequences to your actions and not checkpoints every 30 seconds. Remember Ghosts 'n Ghouls? You'll never get a kid to play that. He'd die, have to start over and the throw the controller because the game implies he's not a winner. He'll go back to COD where there's regenerating health, so he can be a winner, even when losing.

I bet you videogames become interesting if they just get rid of all the hand holding, the scripted sequences, you know the "cinematic experience" over active participation. All that stuff. It's detrimental to gaming, which now is more like interactive movies.

My most played games on the PS4 are Minecraft and Terraria, go figure. And I don't even like those games that much. I played both since they came out on PC, but they're games that still feel somewhat like games. There's a drought of actual games and an inflation of rehashed, mediocre games that copy each other. Open world worked in one game? All games has to have it, regardless if it'll mesh. Money talks. All games must have crafting now too, because of minecraft. And leveling and XP. And political correctness. There must be an agenda in games now. No fun allowed.

I play Wii U a bit because Nintendo still manages to create actual games, although due to families being the target audience, the games are not too challenging. But at least you can get game over in Super Mario 3D World. Consequences are nothing like in the good old days, but at least there is somewhat of a setback still. A sense of punishment for messing up.

I'm looking forward to Fallout 4, but I'm also worried because Bethesda waters down the RPG elements with each iteration of Fallout or TES. More action game, less RPG.
The leveling triggers my autism though, which is one way to get me to keep playing. Sense of progression and completionist mechanics hook me in if the rest of the game is decent enough.
I grinded like crazy in Battlefield 4 just to unlock the guns. I was so sick of the game, but I just had to keep playing to unlock the different guns.

Can we keep the thread positive? I know I am one to talk with my depression threads lately but posting a negative to a negative doesn't seem productive.

Also you sound depressed mr_bigmouth_502.

After a point of being sick of what I could play rather than the idea of playing, I did feel rather down. Lets Plays can actually be really good in that regard. At different times I have enjoyed people playing horror games, with commentary enough of them just explaining how they are feeling without being silly like that one guy. Also some more tactical games or ones where they have partial control of the environment or people. I have fallen a bit out of that person's videos recently though.

Another is the Game Grumps which tend to talk quite out of context at times, but I like to listen to it while I am playing a slow burn game that does not take my full attention, in essence I am playing a game myself, while experiencing another person play a game, listening to full frustrations that may be felt about that game. I think it can do a bit of confidence to hear other people having trouble with games also.

Recently I have enjoyed another person who's any commentary is entirely about the game, visual novel like games where the player gives some voices to characters and gives thoughts on the plot. Regardless of how gamey it is, it is still going along with the journey. Again something I like to partially watch as I play another game.

Games I like to play while also watching a LP is mindlessly build in Minecraft, play a random character in Skyrim, or just a brawler like Hyrule Warriors. A single player game can be just fine, one that is not too hard and feel like you are accomplishing something. You are enjoying the struggles of another player, while being able to look back and see what you also accomplished. My latest ideas for re-playing Skyrim differently is to try and play it as Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. A game does not have to be played by anyone else's rules but your own, and finding games that can do that for you might be the way to get a little interest back.

I didn't intend for this thread to be positive in the first place.


This is partly what I was trying to imply.


I can't stand Game Grumps or most other LPers, and open world games tend to bore me after a while, especially ones like Minecraft.

Ahh, you sound kinda like me here! Dont expect to find too many that agree with these ideas though. Though you probably already know how hard it is to do that.

I agree though, games have... deteriorated. I'm so tired of the current trends in mainstream gaming. Cutscenes being the absolute freaking worst: If a game promises to give me EVEN ONE OF THEM, I'm probably not going to touch it with a 5000-foot pole. Just... no. Do not want! I hate story elements enough in gaming as it is (most are terrible, and I'll just go to my mountain of books if I want a story anyway), and I also hate all movies, so I really dont want to be slammed with both concepts that I loathe in one stupid gameplay-ruining cutscene.

Though of course, yes, there's the other stuff. All that hand-holding. It's not even JUST that it makes single-player games easier. It even affects things like competitive multiplayer games. I'm into fighting games, right? And I'm good, real good. And the thing about that is.... I cant get people to fight me most of the time. Or I guess I should say, I cant get them to fight me more than once. Recent games as a whole have trained them to assume they will always be winners, so if they lose hard enough, they'll give up entirely. Or even yell at me because, CLEARLY, if I defeated their awesome might, it must have been a trick of some sort. That I've played the freaking games to absolute death, and have increased my "overall" skill level by constantly playing REALLY DIFFICULT games, doesnt enter their minds. It's "but I'm supposed to win!" for them.

Not to mention that people wont TRY things these days. And they assume that everything that goes beyond the norm is "impossible!"

Look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wbhb7gY1dQ

Now, to the uninitiated, that looks pretty loopy. But I'm familiar with this genre... very familiar... and I can say that it's a pretty easy game. Well, easy compared to other things in that genre, anyway. This boss? I hadnt practiced it. This being because this was the first time I fought it. I had seen videos of the fight, which I thought would help, but the boss started using attacks that none of the videos had ever showed! I later figured out that this was because I wasnt using bombs on it (most players do), but it didnt matter anyway, I still destroyed it. But I could only do this because my overall skill level was very high, due to the fact that I never shy away from a challenge, and handle game-overs just fine... you're EXPECTED to get a thousand game-overs in a shmup before beating it even once. I dont give up though, so I'd gotten good, and something like this... too easy, even back then. WAY too easy now. I've got videos of MUCH more difficult things than that now, yet handled with the same "dont need to use bombs here" sort of method.

But I can only do that because I'm willing to TRY and actually push forward. The games I play... nearly all of them... encourage this. But mainstream games? Hah! Heaven forbid that the player not reach the end of the all-important STORY... they might not buy the sequel if they dont win! Ugh. Average skill level overall these days, thusly, is very low. Games like Dark Souls are seen as nigh-impossible (sigh...). And even when I find someone that I think might enjoy this specific genre (or other genres I play like Roguelikes) showing them the game always results in the same answer: "How can you DO that? That's impossible! I could never handle that!" and a total refusal to even try. And OF COURSE they cant handle it if they dont give it a whirl!


Now, that's not to say that only difficult games are good, and easy things are bad. Probably my favorite game, period, is Minecraft... I freaking love it. It's perfect for me. No bloody cutscenes, and I can do things the way *I* want to. Alot of people just build, but I can do some of that... and then go adventuring if I want to, as much as I want to, to get stuff and fight, I dunno, skeletons or something on thin bridges (because why the heck not?) or things like that. And I can even add mods to the game to dramatically increase the difficulty (Creepers are muuuuuuch more dangerous if they can shoot flaming death balls that light you on fire AND hit you with a lightning bolt, this being AFTER they use a spell that puts a spider web at your feet... yeah, good luck with that. They still explode when close, too). The game is perfect for me, and keeps getting better. And there's a few (very few) "modern" games that I like as well.

Mostly though, I've gotten into indie games these days. I keep rambling about these on the forums here, and for one reason: They completely avoid all of the problems, including the ones you mention, that plague mainstream gaming now. You want those challenging, complicated, unforgiving experiences from the old days? That's where you'll find it. On PC, mind you, in many cases; they havent gotten big on consoles yet, but I think it's inevitable (hell, Binding of Isaac even appeared on the Wii U recently, this pleased me greatly). I could give suggestions on games like these (or even hand over a copy of one, if I'm in a generous mood) if desired. Most being harder than Isaac, which as much as I love it, isnt THAT difficult.

And these are.... many. So many. I'll put it this way: I have no spending limit, and nothing but free time... I typically buy new games pretty much whenever I happen to feel like it, which is frequently. I bought 2 yesterday, because they were there and I wanted them. I had also bought... uhh... something or other a couple of days before that. Typically, this is how it goes... that's how many of these there are. And I only buy games that fit what I want out of gaming as a whole. So.... it's something to look at, I think. Most of these being on Steam, but not always. No stupid regenerating health, no hand-holding, no stupid "well you died, so go back 30 seconds to the start of this fight and try again, but it'll be easier this time". And really, I just cant imagine gaming being the other way around. I grew up with games that worked like that, and typically that's what I want.

Sadly though... so many these days DONT want that. I hardly ever have anyone to even chat about games with, these days, for that matter. Friends of mine are mostly into the mainstream crap. Typical viewpoint, though a couple of them will at least play the fighters with me, and one in particular never gives up, which is good. But most of them... yeah, they'll stick to their long-winded mainstream games that dont allow the concept of losing. So our tastes dont mesh at all, and that's the case with most people I meet. I'm on my own with these almost all of the time, and it's pretty irritating.

But that's a rant for another time, really.

But yeah, mainstream gaming these days.... ugh. I used to go to places like Gamestop frequently, once upon a time. But now? I've been there MAYBE twice in the last year. The place is useless to me now. They just dont carry anything I care about anymore, and that's not likely to change. Even with the big barrage of major releases coming in November here... the only game I'm after from that group is Anno, dont care about any of the others, and Anno will be on Steam. I probably wont be hitting up the Gamestop again for a long while now.

Okay, a bit rambly here, yes.... kudos to you if you actually read the whole thing. Most people dont.

Well, I'm kinda torn, because I'm not into games that go overboard with storytelling and cutscenes and outright handholding, but I also don't like games that are outright unforgiving. Unfortunately, it's like I'm expected to fall into one of two camps; either I'm supposed to be a CoD kiddie who enjoys on-rails gameplay and storytelling, or someone who plays brutally difficult bullet hells without breaking a sweat. I like good gameplay and a good challenge, but I also like it when games are willing to be somewhat forgiving.

Shovel Knight is almost a good example, in that you can't game over, and you're allowed to go back to previous areas so you can grind for gold and buy better upgrades. On the flipside, it also has some really tricky platforming, which can be rage-inducing for me given my poor reflexes and tendency to accidentally hit buttons I didn't mean to press, though to be fair, it's not AS bad as most actual retro platformers in that regard.

With multiplayer games, I like the more "gamelike" feel of them and the fact that human opponents tend to be more dynamic than AIs, but in games like TF2, sometimes you're stuck with unreliable teammates, and sometimes the other team has one or two people who are WAY better at the game than you or anyone else, and they keep owning you over and over. And don't even get me started on certain weapons like "The Eternal Reward". Ugh. They need to nerf that thing by at least giving it a hitsound, or by making it so that the user doesn't automatically disguise as you. ONE of those features would be fine, both together is OP. They already split "The Equalizer" into two weapons, so why not that?

I read it all, Misery, and I agree with just about all of it. I just can't be bothered to quote separate parts so I'm just going to address points in my post here as I go along:

I think the negative trend in games that we agree that takes place is met with little resistance because the generations that grew up with COD(I keep using that game as an example, because it is an extreme example of a forgiving game with health regen, "press square to win", overemphasis on cinematics etc) are outnumbering those of us who grew up playing the console games of the early 90s and 2000s, and this of course increases as kids get into gaming at a younger age and as more people are born, since just about everybody in the developed world are into some kind of escapism, and video games seem to be among the most popular choices.

These people will keep buying EA and Activisions reskinned games, because they don't have the references that older generations have. Put in short: they don't know it's s**t because they grew up with rehashes of rehashes, so the standard was never set higher. Some kids get into retro games, which gives them access to the vast library of games that many of us grew up with, so at least there is some kind of damage control happening.

I think those kids are the one that could save the industry. But it looks like the big players are going to crash it first, because they can't contain their greed. The "Augment your pre-order" pulled by the Deus-ex publishers was for me the definite confirmation that if people are willing to pay more if they chop up the game into pieces and sell it separately, they will keep giving you a smaller base product, which keeps getting more expensive, with more and more of what would be in the original game put behind a paywall of DLC or microtransactions, because people keep giving them their money. People should have stopped pre-ordering the moment these trends started to appear, but they didn't. It signals to devs that it's okay to let the players do the actual testing, and to give them a miniscule base product, for the price of $60+, and then they can pull ridiculous s**t like $50 season pass which is what we see with Battlefront now.

I'm going to buy Fallout 4 day one, despite my worries. But I'm not pre-ordering, out of principle. There is no real reason to do it either. I don't see stores running out of physical copies, and even if they did, there is an unlimited supply of digital downloads. Then to pre-order digitally makes less sense of all, since there's an unlimited supply. But this is just another way for devs to extort money from naive buyers. It starts with pre-order bonuses, maybe a special skin or level. When devs see that it works and people keep paying for it, they start doing what they've done with DLC. Take out things that should have been in the base game, and then sell it separately. DLC is even announced before release which is just rubbing it in our face that the stuff that should have been in our $60 game has been taken out and sold to us as DLC.